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The Cursed Crusade
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Graphics & Sound:
Alright, I'll just come out and start off with this. The gore in this game is not gory enough, and I hate to be "that" person, but it's true. When a blade goes straight up through someone's skull, well, you'd expect more than just a blade sloppily clipping through. I mean, if the game is going to go there, it may as well commit. There seems to be a big emphasis on brutal moves and generally using every weapon available to the goriest end possible, but the gore just isn't all the way there. Sure, swords go through people, but the requisite blood and body movement doesn't follow. It's not that I want an anatomy lesson every time I connect a hit, really, but something about the look of this game makes it seem more like a puppet show than realistic combat.
But ok, I get the idea of what's happening well enough. That seems to be the way to describe the look of this game in general. Armor isn't really shiny, it's kind of got lots of little blocky reflective bits that seem to be trying to imitate a shiny, smooth surface. And what's up with shiny horses? It looks like they're made of plastic. And faces on people who aren't main characters really seem like they were done rather quickly. Ok, I may be a little harsh here. Overall it looks ok, it's just not stunning looking, and the flaws and clipping problems are pretty easy to pick out.
The sound is equally decent, though it could use some polish too. The metallic jingle from all that armor and metal your characters wear often doesn't seem to sync up with their movements. The voice acting is decent too, though it seems to be aimed at more of a Saturday morning cartoon crowd. Esteban, the game's Spaniard, sounds more like a cartoon Puss in Boots than a battle-hardened warrior. And Denz, the game's main character, has the most standard, straight American accent I've ever heard. This is strange, because not only is it not possible he was American during this time period, but his background strongly suggests he was born and raised in France. Oh well, I had a good time imitating his voice and saying things like "Esteban! Let us go have crepes and enjoy a nice wine, from France, where I am from, because I'm very proud of my home country, which is France. VIVA LA FRANCE!" |
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Gameplay:
The Cursed Crusade puts you in the shoes of Denz de Bayle and Esteban Noviembre, two mercenaries who meet while storming a castle. Denz has something of a pedigree, so his participation in such dirty work is a surprise. Esteban is the thief and the ruffian with a heart of gold. They end up as allies, though Denz is somewhat reluctant, and head off to join the Crusades and to find Denz's lost father. The twist is, there's a curse that afflicts both of them. This curse causes them to turn into demon versions of themselves, and to see damned souls, and even Death himself. No one else sees this, but while they are in the cursed world, not only are their mortal enemies still hunting them, but Death is watching and waiting for the opportunity to take them.
The explanation of this curse trickles down through the story painfully slowly. It's not that I can't appreciate suspense, but tons of people in this game seem to have the curse. Denz seems to understand it, but only to the extent that he knows it exists, and that someone did an evil deed to make it happen. It's just kind of frustrating when it seems like everyone knows what's going on already, and they don't clue in the audience.
What the curse means for you in the game is that you can switch to cursed mode to gain speed, power, and other advantages. But it will slowly kill you if you stay there too long, so it has to be used sparingly. Just as you can upgrade other abilities, you can upgrade your resistance to the curse as well, so you can potentially use its powers more often. If you want to focus on your real world strengths, you can upgrade your armor, weapon power, combos, and constitution. There are tons of weapon combinations you can discover and upgrade as you go as well. This is an aspect where the game really could have shined, as you can find your favorite combination such as double swords, sword and shield, or double-handed greatsword. But a lot of other things get in the way, as you'll read.
The co-op aspect of this game consists of some rather forced aspects, but I'll still take forced co-op over more complicated, hard to play kinds. Basically, if you need to move a big object, you'll go press a button next to it, and wait for your partner to come help you. If you're about to die, your partner can come up and revive you. You can perpetually save each other this way, unless Death closes in and takes you before your partner gets there. There are also moves where you can grab an enemy and hold them for your partner to perform a really brutal finishing move on. Co-op with a live person, therefore, is a smooth transition, since the game is pretty much built around it.
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Difficulty:
The Cursed Crusade is not a particularly tough game. It does require a lot of attention to cues from enemies, and learning combos is essential to dealing damage in an efficient and timely manner. But it's not particularly tricky to pick up any of these things.
The controls do present a bit of difficulty on their own. Things just don't feel responsive enough, and it can take several button presses before you get a reaction from your character. You've got to learn to separate enemies and keep the heat off, because it's difficult to deal with even one enemy with controls like this.
If you're trying to collect all the coffers and purify souls, that's also made difficult by the fact that sometimes walking into a certain spot will trigger traveling to the next area. If you hadn't searched for everything before that point, you'll be out of luck. Since you don't really know where these triggers are coming from, that almost always means you'll need another playthrough to collect everything, if you care about that sort of thing.
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Game Mechanics:
Ok, I have to say the glitches in The Cursed Crusade are the most hilarious I've ever seen, so I totally don't count them against the game. There are sequences where Esteban and Denz have to work together to open an iron gate. Normally, one person opens the gate, the other goes under, and then holds the gate for the other person to go through. During co-op play, I had a serious of escalating hilarious glitches where either the gate would lift itself, and then one person would go through, or one person would lift the gate, allow the other through, but be snubbed by his partner and trapped on the other side of the gate. None of these actually stopped the gameplay, and in the next scene, both players were successfully on the other side. It seems many of the glitches are related to cut-scenes, and therefore not too detrimental to the game.
There are some chronic annoyances that do actually affect gameplay, however. For example, the camera changes angles for a bit of variety and dramatic effect. The problem is that the controls don't automatically adjust for you, as is the case in many other games that use the effect. So you'll be going in one direction, and when the camera angle changes, you find yourself going backwards or running into a wall. And in single player, your CPU partner will often get stuck on a stair or wall. If you run into something where you need his help, you might end up backtracking to try to free him by "luring" him out of his glitchy prison. There are also interactive objects that are difficult to trigger. This is not necessarily a glitch, but it seems to have a trigger range that's thinner than a hair. So you could be trying for days to trigger an interactive well that lets you kick people into it. Dreams of 300-like glory are dashed rather quickly.
The Cursed Crusade is not a stunner in any department, but it's a decent medieval period game with a twist in the curse aspect. With a bit of polish, it could have been pretty awesome, but sadly, it's just not quite there. |
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-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville |
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